Stanford Stanford

Original ResearchArticles in Press111828Open access 1Medical University of South Carolina, Division of Medical Hematology and Oncology, Department of Medicine, Charleston, SC, USA 2Department of Mathematics, Indiana University Northwest, Gary, Indiana, USA 3Dept. of Equity, Ethics and Policy School of Population and Global Health, McGill University,2001 McGill College Ave.

We live in a time when we are bombarded with information about harmful substances in the food we eat. In a way, it can be said that the discourse against the technification of food production has prevailed among the general public. Among these substances are the herbicides used to control weeds in crops, and one in particular stands out: the widely used but controversial glyphosate.

If humanity encounters intelligent extraterrestrials, they may possess the intellect to decipher our language. But they may also want to gauge our capacity to cooperate in deciphering theirs, echoing the plot of the 2016 sci-fi movie Arrival. Decoding an intelligent signal from space is the dream of researchers at the SETI Institute (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence), but how to develop this skill when our planet has no intelligent aliens to converse with.